12.27.09

Links 27/12/2009: RSSOwl 2 Reviewed, Glimpse at Fedora Omega 12

Posted in News Roundup at 6:31 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux
- Distributions
- Devices/Embedded
Free Software/Open Source
Leftovers
Digital Tipping Point: Clip of the Day

GNU/Linux

Cloud over the IT world in 2010? – Survey results & what next for Windows?

So what of Windows? Could its closed source nature be eventually the death of it? Quite possibly, one only has to look at the wealth of FOSS projects that are providing alternative solutions to many of Microsoft products. Even Microsoft themselves are alleged to use GPL code (and allegedly violate it albeit by a third party)

Remember Mr Ballmer’s cancer comment in regards to Linux?

Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches

But then should we really pay any attention to him? he was alleged afterall to also say that Google was a house of cards and iPhone had no chance of getting a significant market share. I bring this up since GoogleOS is built on Linux so its rather relevant that the first “mainstream” steps of this concept are being taken by that which Mr Ballmer seems to have a low opinion of. Talking of cancer and IP, I wonder if he would like to retract that since Microsoft China are alleged to have taken code from another companies product and attempted to use it as their own. For more information on this, read the article here.
It’s the eye of the beholder.

I like Linux. I like it a lot and I think it is the best thing since sliced bread. Better even, I don’t make any money off of sliced bread, just a bigger belly. I know that many of you out there like windows. You like it a lot as well and probably make money off of it too.

When we like something we tend to gloss over the flaws. There is another saying that love is blind. That is also very true. Not just in looks but in every aspect. On the other side of the coin. When we dislike something we tend to exaggerate the flaws. This means that when somebody is gushing about Linux or ranting about windows then perhaps we should take off our rose shades and try to see things from their point of view.
15 game-changing Linux moments of the decade

May 2002: OpenOffice.org 1.0

Few would consider using Linux if there wasn’t the semblance of Microsoft Office compatibility. Sun Microsystems bought, renamed and released its own broadly compatible office suite for free, in what it must have hoped would be a flanking attack on Microsoft’s dominance. A tactic it revisited with the re-licence of Java in 2007.
Microsoft fears Windows XP? – or Ylmf.OS?

Ylmf OS appears to the casual user as XP. Currently the Ubuntu based distro has no English translation. What does this mean for Microsoft? Well if it becomes the “protest choice” of China then quite alot, its got a 10 million strong user base to attract. You can visit the website of this distro here and I would ask if anyone knows of either a translation for the distro itself and/or the homepage, please let me know!
Server
- Habl to introduce revolutionary server solution in 2010
  
  Habl Consultancy, an open source and linux solutions provider headquartered in Dubai Silicon Oasis, promises to announce a revolutionary network server solution in January 2010. The exact details of the server solution are currently under wraps, however it will help companies save an enormous amount of money.
Applications
- RSSOwl 2.0.1 Review – Feature-Rich Feed Reader for Linux
  
  Written in Java, RSSOwl is a powerful feed reader for Linux, with support for RSS, RDF and Atom feeds, with a lot of features and customisation options.
- OpenTumblr Goes QT, [Desktop Tumblr App]
  
  The QT-ing of OpenTumblr has resulted in most of OpenTumblr getting a visual shakedown. Whilst many windows need some usability-guidelines applied, everything works as it should.
- Looking for a Decent Office Suite in Linux? [Proprietary]
- Instructionals
Distributions
- Sabayon 5.1 : Another good KDE distribution
  
  Sabayon 5.1 is really another good as well as a newbie friendly distribution for average computer users. It may not be as easy as Ubuntu or OpenSUSE but a person with 6-9 months of knowledge in Linux can easily manage Sabayon.
- BrowserLinux: a Linux distro with a browser, and nothing much else
  
  Okay, if you’re looking to install this on your main computer, I really wouldn’t advise doing that. Having a lightweight operating system is well and good, but to run a system as stripped-down as this, you’re going to run into something that’ll need an application not available for your OS. Better stick with a bootable flash drive if I were you.
- Red Hat Family
  - Fedora Omega 12 Screenshots
- Debian Family
  - Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx Alpha 1 review
    
    Ubuntu 10.04’s Alpha has been released. We decided to install it on one of our netbooks to see what is new in it. Canonical claims that many new things will surface with the release Ubuntu 10.04 and some of them have been implemented in the alpha release.
    
    [...]
    
    Right now, there is not even a basic paint alternative. gpaint which although looks a lot like MS paint, but cannot even crop a picture. So, if GIMP is removed, I don’t think there is a worthy MSpaint alternative in Linux
    
    Office
    
    * Dictionary
    * Evolution mail and calender
    * OpenOffice Presentaion
    * OpenOffice Spreadsheet
    * OpenOffice Word Processor
    
    Sound and Video
    
    * Brasero Disc Burner
    * Movie Player
    * Rhythmbox Music Player
    * Sound Recorder
  - Karmic Koala: What’s new in Ubuntu
    
    One important feature is the new software centre, Kissling says. A bit of background: modern Linux distributions all possess a so-called package manager. This is a utility to help users install new software not included with Linux itself. Instead of searching through the web for a specific program, the package manager handles the heavy lifting.
  - Sabily 9.10 Is Based on Karmic Koala
    
    Complete with customized artwork and a big collection of Muslim-specific software, Sabily (formerly Ubuntu Muslim Edition) is a robust operating system for Muslims all over the world, be they Arabic speakers or not.
Devices/Embedded
- Sansa Fuze, Works great with Ubuntu and Rythmbox
  
  All in all another pleasant experience with Sansa products under Linux. I have an older e250 myself and had another even before that, all of which worked well with Ubuntu. For a quality music/video player for use with Ubuntu I can highly recommend the products from Sansa. Most can be purchased for less then $75 and refurbished ones like my last two for well under $50.
- Cherrypal Offers Laptop for Under $100
  
  Cherrypal on Tuesday announced a no-frills laptop called Cherrypal Africa, which includes hardware usually found in smartphones. It can run the Linux or Windows CE operating systems, which are also found on cell phones.
  
  Priced at $99, the laptop is targeted at those looking for an inexpensive PC to surf the Internet, said Max Seybold, founder of Cherrypal. It is a “no-thrills” laptop that could find an audience in developing countries and low-income groups in the Western world, he said

Free Software/Open Source

Samba Team Blog #3

The Samba 4 code has been worked on for over five years, and the Active Directory code is reaching a state where it’s being run in production at several test sites.

When the Samba Team met at the CIFS conference this year, we had a meeting to put together a plan for shipping a production Samba 4 code-base. Here’s how we think it might work.
Asian ‘campers’ troop to Cavite, reinforce open-source movement

The conference was the third such event in the region, organized by the International Open Source Network (IOSN) and InWEnt-Capacity Building International of Germany.

Earlier camps took place in Bangalore, India in 2005 and Sukabumi, Indonesia in 2007. It is based on the source camp template of the Tactical Technology Collective, an NGO that consults for other NGOs on technology.
Google Open Source Projects You Didn’t Know About

I just came across some Open source projects by Google, which were really unknown to me.
Mozilla
- Getting Mozilla’s Lightning/Iceowl to work in Thunderbird/Icedove
  
  We all know that due to the copyright of the Mozilla Foundation/Corporation/whatever-it-is, that the Debian project decided awhile ago to drop the copyrighted logos and names from the very popular Mozilla products, hence:
  
  Firefox = Iceweasel
  Thunderbird = Icedove
  Seamonkey = Iceape
  
  And it turns out the Mozilla standalone calendar application Sunbird as well as the Lightning version of that app that works inside of Thunderbird/Icedove has its own Debian-dubbed name:
  
  Iceowl.
- Free email programme Thunderbird available in new version
  
  The email programme Thunderbird is available in a new, highly revised version, its developer Mozilla Messaging has announced. Thunderbird 3.0, an open-source email client, includes more than 2,000 revisions and improvements, according to the California-based company which is also behind the Firefox browser.
Openness
- US Gov Requests Feedback on Open Access – ACM Gets it Wrong (Again)
  
  In 2008, legislation was passed requiring all NIH-funded researchers to submit their papers to an openly available repository within a year of publication. Even this modest step towards full open access was immediately attacked by rent-seeking scientific publishers.

Leftovers

Upper Mismanagement

It’s not obvious that you would. Since 1965, the percentage of graduates of highly-ranked business schools who go into consulting and financial services has doubled, from about one-third to about two-thirds. And while some of these consultants and financiers end up in the manufacturing sector, in some respects that’s the problem. Harvard business professor Rakesh Khurana, with whom I discussed these questions at length, observes that most of GM’s top executives in recent decades hailed from a finance rather than an operations background.
Finance
- Responding to Goldman Sachs
  
  The New York Times published a Christmas Eve expose of Goldman Sachs’s so-called “Abacus” synthetic collateralized debt obligations (CDOs). They were created with credit derivatives instead of cash securities. Goldman used credit derivatives to create short bets that gain in value when CDOs lose value. Goldman did this for both protection and profit and marketed the idea to hedge funds.
- Master of risk who did God’s work for Goldman Sachs but won it little love
  
  Under other circumstances, this would have been a year to savour in the long, rapid ascent of Lloyd Blankfein. Goldman Sachs, the investment bank he has led for three years, not only navigated the 2008 global financial crisis better than others on Wall Street but is set to make record profits, and pay up to $23bn (€16bn, £14bn) in bonuses to its 31,700 staff.
- Banks Bundled Bad Debt, Bet Against It and Won
  
  “The simultaneous selling of securities to customers and shorting them because they believed they were going to default is the most cynical use of credit information that I have ever seen,” said Sylvain R. Raynes, an expert in structured finance at R & R Consulting in New York. “When you buy protection against an event that you have a hand in causing, you are buying fire insurance on someone else’s house and then committing arson.”
- Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein Named Financial Times Person Of The Year
  
  But while the FT may agree that Blankfein is doing “God’s work,” others view the bank as indicative of exactly what is wrong with Wall Street. Indeed, Blankfein himself apologized last month for Goldman Sachs’ role in the financial crisis. And Goldman Sachs’s trading practices are currently under investigation by the federal government.
  
  In response to the FT’s decision to honor Blankfein, noted bank analyst Christopher Whalen has canceled his subscription to the paper. “Mr. Blankfein and his colleagues at Goldman Sachs, in my view, have done more to damage the reputations of global financial professionals than any other organization in 2009, yet you applaud them,” he wrote in a letter to the paper.
Censorship/Civil Rights
- Chinese human rights activist Liu Xiaobo sentenced to 11 years in jail
  
  One of China’s most prominent human rights activists was condemned today to 11 years in prison, prompting a furious backlash from domestic bloggers and international civil society groups.
  
  Liu Xiaobo, the founder of the Charter 08 campaign for constitutional reform, was given the unusually harsh jail term on Christmas Day in an apparent attempt to minimise international attention.
- (en) Venezuela, Anarchist journal El Libertario #57 – To defend the right of social protest!
  
  From Venezuela, a group of social organizations and human rights, students and academic groups as well as different individuals, launch this call for a campaign to defend the right to protest, which today is being systematically violated by the government of Hugo Chávez.